View full sizeOnce the Davy Crockett broke in two, off Camas, Wash., officials placed a thin retaining wall around it to trap leaking oil.Bruce Ely/The Oregonian/2011

Until the dead, 431-foot ship Davy Crockett cracked in two and mired in mud off Camas, Wash., it didn't officially pose a problem, even though it had no capacity to move and had been moored for weeks in the same spot. That's because it floated over river bottom managed by the state's Department of Natural Resources, whose only authority was to go after stuck, abandoned or troubled vessels of up to 200 feet in length. And the Columbia River soon took on the sheen of oil, some of it 15 miles downriver, as the Davy Crockett started to leak oil.

The result was a call to action in 2011 by the Oregon Department of Environmental Quality, the Washington Department of Ecology and the U.S. Coast Guard to contain the mess, at one point with an 850-linear-foot cofferdam around the vessel. Though just 70 gallons of oil were documented as lost, another 5,700 gallons went unaccounted for while 38,000 gallons were safely recovered. Dismantling and disposal of the former Liberty ship, once fitted as a wartime launch and cargo carrier, became its own industrial-level scrap operation.

Oregon and Washington spent about $680,000 doing the dirty work. But U.S. taxpayers really got hit for the 10-month saga: $22 million. Disruption or even damage to the Columbia River's ecosystems, supporting protected salmon for which this region spends billions of dollars, never fully figured in.

This week the vessel's owner was slapped with a fine of $405,000 from Washington's Department of Ecology. Bret Simpson, a scrap dealer from Ellensburg, Wash., was found to have abandoned the Davy Crockett without the capacity to properly dismantle it or a permit for doing so and knowingly allowed it leak oil into the river.

If the fine sounds disproportionate to the crime, consider that federal prosecutors judge Simpson to have little means of paying it. And following Simpson's admission he violated the federal Clean Water Act, The Oregonian's Scott Learn reported, they want Simpson to get a 13-month sentence, including six months of home detention. Prosecutors also would like Simpson to perform 100 hours of community service that strike an environmental tone -- a learning experience, perhaps, for a man who pled guilty in 1998 to illegally burying up to 30 drums of waste oil, antifreeze and solvents on his property.

But Simpson never was the first problem in the Davy Crockett drama. Failed river governance was. Before the spill, the worst sanction that could have been brought against the Davy Crockett's owner was a small monthly trespassing fine. And only if the ship had obstructed the Columbia's navigation lane or been obviously leaking oil could the U.S. Coast Guard have stepped in.

The Columbia and Willamette rivers are littered with troubled vessels that could pose a threat. While the Washington Department of Ecology's action this week against Simpson is welcome news, the better development is that the Davy Crockett mess spurred the creation of a Columbia River Derelict Vessel Task Force, including agencies from both states as well as the Multnomah County Sheriff's Office, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

The task force already has identified more than 50 "vessels of concern" and is focused on closing state and federal regulatory gaps so that the next Davy Crockett doesn't break apart and pollute a river. Its work informs draft legislation headed to the Oregon and Washington legislatures.

We have one immediate provision to suggest: Get rid of the 200-foot-or-under rule. It's a fool's errand to worry about a 431-foot time bomb knowing you can do nothing to defuse it. Our river patrols need teeth if we want our rivers to be all the things we insist they be: clean, productive and healthy.